Novell and Microsoft in Celebratory Moods

Nov 21, 2008

For two years now Novell and Microsoft have been playing with the idea of interoperability between Linux and Windows. They hope to strengthen their partnership further through their announcement of the Advanced Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 and a beta of the Moonlight Firefox rich media plug-in.

Microsoft and Novell have been busily intensifying market cooperation, whereby Microsoft sales executives are now selling SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) subscriptions. Novell's Susan Heystee, tasked to oversee the partnership from her company's perspective, makes no bones about it that the success of this cross-fertilization has exceeded her expectations. The 200 corporate participants who joined the venture now include the likes of BP Oil International and China Mobile. Back in August, Microsoft had offered the partnership huge financial support.

Novell's part of the bargain is the Advanced Management Pack for SLES and Microsoft's System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2. The monitoring and management tool should alleviate administering cross-platform systems and enhance the capabilities of System Center Operations Manager. Linux and Windows can be monitored through a single console. The completed Advanced Management Pack, along with the Operations Manager, should be released some time in the next year.

Novell meanwhile also released its Moonlight beta, a free Firefox plug-in implementation of Microsoft's Silverlight Toolkit that is supposed to create some competition for Adobe's Flash Player.

Related content

  • Microsoft: Working Well with Novell

    The current technical and financial collaboration with Novell seems to be pleasing Microsoft. Virtualization, file management and license sales are part of the success stories.

    more »
  • SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 Arrives

    Novell announced today that SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) is officially out in version 11. The SLES extensions for Mono and the desktop version SLED 11 should also concurrently hit the market. A high-availability extension is to follow.

    more »
  • Free Software Projects

    Finally there's a free alternative to the proprietary Flash on the web. Unfortunately, it implements Microsoft technology whose software patents might render the free Moonlight license useless.

    more »
  • Novell Alliance with VMware and Preview of SLES 11

    An alliance is forming between virtualization providers Novell and VMware with a strategy for teamwork. At the same time Novell is providing a glimpse of its upcoming SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) version 11.

    more »
  • Brainshare 2008

    Novell vendors, developers, and users exchanged metaphors and business cards in Salt Lake City.

    more »

Comments

  • Doesn't this already exist?

    Check me if I'm wrong Sandy but isn't Operations Centre System or whatever it's called just Nagios but not as customizable and costly? Also, Silver/Moonlight looks like ActiveX for the web 2.0 generation. Scary...
comments powered by Disqus
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters

Support Our Work

Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.

Learn More

News

Tag Cloud

Administration Community Events Hardware Linux Linux Pro Magazine Mobile Programming Security Software Ubuntu Web Development Windows free software open source